A Time to Kill-Lauren Kelleher

Lauren Kelleher

Gordon 5

A Time To Kill blog post

1.     What Carl Lee Haley did in was not lawful justice because it was not justice achieved through governmental law systems, however moral justice is a whole new issue. Morality of two men kidnapping, beating, and raping a 10-year-old girl and only receiving a 2-year sentence would drive any father to feel that pain so deeply it would drive him to kill. My father along with many fathers I know would have probably taken similar action to Carl Lee however does are valid reason make it just? I believe that a 2-year sentence is unjust but taking justice into your own hands is also unjust.

2.     Carl Lee Haley committed the crime of killing the two men who kidnapped his 10-year-old daughter, beat, and rapped her almost to death for fairly clear reasons. Her father also feels the trauma that a daughter goes through, almost as deeply, and the rage that came from the denial of justice for his daughter and family combined with the anguish from the rape drove him to commit murder.

3.     Carl Lee Haley’s punishment should be minimal jail time because I do believe that we as a society cannot permit vigilantly justice even with reason. But I also believe that Carl should have a large amount of psychological evaluation and treatment for him and his family.

4.     The scales of justice are hard to ever be balanced because to quote Mathew Miconahay in this movie “you the jury are the eyes of the law.” The fact that the jury was all white in a case where a black man shot two white men, no matter how valid the reasons are, CLH’s actions would have been seen differently if the races were reversed.

5.     The only way that Tanya Haley’s race would matter in this case would be if it were seen from the perspective of a hate crime. Because of the clear racism in the South during this time the men knew that they could get away with what they did or at least get a lesser sentence. The way that the men treated this 10-year-old girl could only have been fueled by racial hatred. The line that Mathew Miconahay’s character in his summation when he asked the all white jury to imagine that Tanya Haley was white, speaks volumes about the extent that he had to go to for the jury to have empathy for Tanya Haley.